I’m an English Studies honours graduate: Now what?

I’ve been back at home for about two months now but I haven’t completely adjusted back to normal life. My convocation ceremony was last month and I now have a diploma tucked into my bookshelf. (Framing has yet to happen.) So… I have an honours degree in English literature – now what?

I’ve been on the hunt for a new job that could somehow be said to be related to my degree, but nothing has happened yet. I’ve had three interviews, two of which I was accepted, but I turned them down because they were no better than what I actually have right now. I work in a retail fabric store, but I actually love it a lot. When I started applying to other retail stores out of desperation, I wasn’t getting many hours. Things have picked up at work and I’m picking up a decent 30 hours a week. For now, this will be okay.

I’m living with my parents for now, and after being with many different roommates for the past four years, it seems strange to be home. Mostly, I find it weird that my living style has changed so much from my parents that I get annoyed with the state of the kitchen – if they were strangers, I’d call them bad roommates about the dishes. (Oops.) I have to get over it through – I’m living rent free for now.

So basically, at the moment I’m just working and saving money. My little tax-free savings account is growing month-by-month (I deposit a fake monthly rent payment in there as if I were paying real rent), my VISA card is entirely paid off, and I’m going to start making payments on my massive student loan soon. I’m studying for my G1 test, because yes, I’m 22 years of age and I still don’t have my driving learner’s permit. I’m done school so it’s time for that obligatory growing up period.

I really want to move into a little apartment (perhaps with my boyfriend, hehe) once I can afford to, but for now, saving is important, and I’m glad my parents are letting me live rent-free so to help me save faster.

Web-wise, I’m working on a new project! It’s the biggest PHP-based project I’ve worked on; it’s much larger than Magitek Designs, which is completely database-driven. I’ve been plugging away at it for about a month and a half now, and I’m aiming to launch August 1st 2009. The basic functionality of the website is complete, but there are many features that I want to code up for it before there are live users on the site. It’s my first time coding a membership system! I’ve had a lot of fun working on it and debugging everything has taught me so much more about PHP. There’s still a hefty to-do list, but I think it can be realistically completed in fifteen days.

Things I’m Working On:

• Sushi-Print Dress: it’s ridiculous. Yup! It’s a classic lolita silhouette made out a silly quilting cotton. It has black bias ruffles along the bottom. The skirt is quite full and will be gathered onto the bodice. I need to make a new facing for the bodice because my interfacing made it way too thick – I think it will be fine without. I will post pictures when it’s done!
• Polka Dot Dress: I bought polka dot material on clearance last year, and I’m finally getting around to making it. This year, I found some white and blue polka dot organza that I’m going to having sticking out the bottom as trim. So cute!
• Scrapbooking University: I’m about 3/4 of the way done scrapbooking my university life. I’ve finished years one through three, but there’s a lot to be done for year four. My scrapbook was getting too thick so I separated it into two albums.
• Scrapbooking The Afterlife?!: Now that I’m out of university, I don’t even know what to call the rest of my scrapbooks. There’s no school-related units of time anymore. But, I’ve started a few pages from this summer already, mostly because there are cute pictures of my boyfriend and me so I couldn’t help myself.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 17th, 2009 at 12:26 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.